UPDATE: Power restored to thousands in Nova Scotia

Tens of thousands of Nova Scotians are back on the electrical grid as crews worked Tuesday to repair power lines damaged by a major Christmas Day storm in Atlantic Canada.

About 17,000 homes and businesses in Nova Scotia remained without electricity as of about 5:30 p.m. local time, the province’s power utility said.

Nova Scotia Power spokeswoman Tiffany Chase said about 139,000 affected customers had their power restored by late Tuesday afternoon.

She said more than 700 personnel are working “around the clock” to get the rest of the province back on the grid, including contract crews from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

The utility estimated that 90 per cent of affected customers will see their power come back on by late Tuesday evening, Chase said, and the remaining isolated outages should be resolved by Wednesday afternoon.

“We know it is the holidays and many people have plans for things like turkey dinners,” Chase said.

“We do appreciate their patience as our crews continue to safely work to restore power to customers as quickly as possible.”

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Hundreds of Nova Scotia Power crews will spend Boxing Day stitching together power lines snapped by a winter storm that brought damaging winds to Atlantic Canada on Christmas Day.

But even with the extra help, the power company says damage is substantial and the “vast majority of customers” may not have their electricity restored until noon Wednesday.

We won't stop until all customers are restored. We thank our customers for their continued support and kindness during restoration efforts. Customers should report outages to 1-877-428-6004. The latest outage information can be found at https://t.co/cKMppFqg0n

The storm brought winds gusting up to 100 kilometres perm hour along the Atlantic Coast, along with a mix of snow, freezing rain and rain across the province. Today’s forecast for much of Nova Scotia calls for a few centimetres of snow with winds gusting to 50 kilometres per hour.

NL Hydro reported outages early Tuesday affecting Port Saunders, Eddies Cove and Port Au Choix. The utility has not said when power would return and did not have a restoration estimate.